Thread by @schock

A brief thread on #ADA30 and the future of design: Disability justice is foundational to #designjustice. Ch. 2 of Design Justice begins with the disability activist slogan "Nothing about us without us." (Freely available here: design-justice.pubpub.org/pub/cfohnud7/r…)

Figure 2.1, at the start of Ch.2, is the cover illustration for “Nothing About Us Without Us: Developing Innovative
Technologies For, By and With Disabled Persons” by David Werner, 1998,
dinf.ne.jp/doc/english/gl…

In the chapter, I argue that employment diversity is important, but that ultimately, #designjustice challenges us to push beyond the demand for more equitable allocation of professional design jobs.

"Employment diversity is a necessary first move, but it is not the far horizon of collective liberation and ecological sustainability." Instead, I want to spur our imaginations beyond a system of design largely organized around the reproduction of the matrix of domination.

Instead, we need to imagine how all aspects of design can be reorganized around human capabilities, collective liberation, and ecological sustainability.

After the Chapter intro, the next section explores who gets (paid) to do design. "[Although] all humans design, not everyone gets paid to do so. Intersectional inequality systematically structures paid professional design work."

design-justice.pubpub.org/pub/cfohnud7/r…

The numerous expert designers (and technologists!) who are not wealthy and/or educationally privileged white non-disabled cis men have often been ignored, their labor appropriated, and their stories erased from the history of tech and design.

In the following section, "Diversity Is Good for Capitalist Profitability," I discuss how, although employee 'diversity' is certainly a laudable goal, it remains comfortably within the discourse of (neo)liberal multiculturalism and entrepreneurial citizenship (thanks @gleemie)

Under the informational stage of racial capitalism, employee diversity is seen by most of the managerial class as an input to increased efficiency, innovation, market domination, and capital accumulation. We still need to fight for equitable employment, but it isn't the end goal.

In the next section, "Imagined Users: Whose Tech?", we see that #DesignJustice also involves rethinking other aspects of design practice, including the intended design beneficiaries: the “users.”

This section starts with a quote from @PennyRed: "There is nothing wrong with making things that people want. The problem is [...] The kids in Startup House may want a pizza delivery drone, but not in the same way low-income families want health care" design-justice.pubpub.org/pub/cfohnud7/r…

The next section critiques User-Centered Design, the “Unmarked” User, and the Spiral of Exclusion: design-justice.pubpub.org/pub/cfohnud7/r…

UCD faces a paradox: it prioritizes “real-world users.” Yet if, for broader reasons of structural inequality, the universe of real-world users falls within a limited range compared to the full breadth of potential users, then UCD reproduces exclusion by centering their needs.

The choice of _which users_ are at the center of any given UCD process is political, and it produces outcomes (designed interfaces, products, processes) that are better for some people than others (sometimes very much better, sometimes only marginally so). #ADA30

The next section, "Design Justice and Lead User Innovation," critically engages with Eric Von Hippel’s concepts of lead user innovation, information asymmetry between manufacturers and users, and variance in user product needs. design-justice.pubpub.org/pub/cfohnud7/r…

In particular, #DesignJustice focuses on the ways that race, class, gender, and disability structure both information asymmetries and variance in user product needs. This is an extension/critique of Von Hippel's ideas about _Democratizing Innovation_.

I felt it was important to write this section because Von Hippel never specifically explores how what he refers to as variance in user product specifications might be structured by race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, and/or disability. #ADA30

In the following section, I go in on "“Stand-in Strategies” to Represent Communities That Are Not Really Included in the Design Process." @AimiHamraie, whose work is phenomenal, says this is their favorite part ;) design-justice.pubpub.org/pub/cfohnud7/r…

This is the section about User Personas. If you work in #UX, you should read this part. Personas have some value, but "far too often user personas are created out of thin air by members of the design team (if not autogenerated by a service like Userforge)"...

... "based on their own assumptions or stereotypes about groups of people who might occupy a very different location in the matrix of domination. When this happens, user personas are literally objectified assumptions about end users." #ADA30

In the worst case, these objectified assumptions then guide product development to fit stereotyped but unvalidated user needs [...] Unsurprisingly, there are no studies that compare this approach to actually including diverse users on the design team.

design-justice.pubpub.org/pub/cfohnud7/r…

This brings us to probably the most relevant section of the book for #ADA30. If you take one thing away from this thread, and the book, let it be this:

Disability Simulation Is Discredited; Lived Experience Is Not Fully Transferable.

design-justice.pubpub.org/pub/cfohnud7/r…

In other words, pretending to be another kind of person is not a good solution for design teams that want to minimize discriminatory design outcomes.

#ADA30

#DesignJustice practitioners focus on trying to ensure that community members are actually included in meaningful ways throughout the design process, rather than on extracting knowledge from community members who are conceived as the end users of a product.

There's more, on participatory design, #DisabilityJustice and Queer Crip Design.

Ultimately, #ADA30 is a chance to celebrate the movement's victories but also to take stock of the continued struggle ahead in every field, including design.

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design-justice.pubpub.org/pub/cfohnud7/r…

PS:

https://twitter.com/schock/status/1287399330329108483?s=20